Daegu mackerel restaurant with free iced cups to go: Geumdeungeo

Weekend's finally here!! Did everyone push through the week...? I actually worked pretty hard this week for once, so the weekend came around faster than I expected haha. Nothing major planned, but not having to wake up on schedule is just the best!

To mark the weekend, I want to recommend a restaurant that's great for group gatherings or family meals — Geumdeungeo, near Suseong Lake!!

Where is Geumdeungeo Deulanguil Main Branch, and where do you park?

Geumdeungeo, famous for grilled mackerel, is on the 2nd floor at 57 Deulan-ro, Suseong-gu, near Suseong Lake. The place is spacious and really clean! Being close to the lake, it also looked like a great stop before or after a walk or a date there.

Fitting for such a large restaurant, there are also three parking towers, so parking is zero worry! With up to 90 minutes supported, that's plenty of time to eat comfortably at your own pace, don't you think??

Weekday-evening waiting by tablet and the room-style seats

Geumdeungeo's dining area is split between outdoor table seats and separate room(?)-style seats. Not fully enclosed rooms, but cut off from the outside area, so if you're with a group or want a bit more quiet, the room seats look like the way to go.

Even on a weekday evening the place was packed with guests, and there was even a wait!! The wait wasn't inconvenient though — you just enter your info on a tablet and wait for a KakaoTalk message. There were clearly a lot of families and group parties in the restaurant.

What we ordered: wood-fired mackerel for two, plus spicy pork and cockles

As a restaurant built around grilled mackerel, Geumdeungeo's headline dish was the nuruk-salt aged wood-fired mackerel. If you're not into mackerel, there was also a smoky-charred spicy pork stir-fry (jeyuk-bokkeum) and a cockle salad (kkomak-muchim)!

Since ordering mackerel or pork as your main by headcount keeps the add-ons cheap, we ordered two servings of wood-fired mackerel plus one spicy pork stir-fry and one cockle salad.

The banchan and the self-serve side bar

With so many guests, everything seemed set up so food could come out fast — the banchan (side dishes) were laid out quickly! There were lots of varieties, all clean and tasty: japchae (glass noodle stir-fry), seaweed salad, salted seafood, kkakdugi (radish kimchi), burdock salad, green onion kimchi, dried seaweed, stir-fried anchovies, and doenjang stew. The japchae and seaweed salad were especially delicious to me!

If the banchan is so good you finish it, you can freely go back to the salad bar for as much as you want — so we happily piled our plates and went back several times haha. I ate a truly serious amount of japchae.

Wood-fired mackerel kept hot on an induction plate

Geumdeungeo's grilled mackerel comes out nicely charred on a grill plate along with the nuruk salt, and it's placed on a warm induction burner so you can keep eating it hot the whole time.

Also, my wife (Jin) really loves grilled fish!! She was so diligently picking the fish apart... eating it over rice, wrapping it in dried seaweed, all of it! I'm not great at deboning fish myself, haha...

Spicy pork stir-fry and seasoned cockles

But! The extra dishes we ordered — the spicy pork stir-fry and the cockle salad — turned out to be so good! The pork stir-fry had enough smoky char to open its own specialty shop, and the cockle salad, which I hadn't had in ages, was plump, spicy-sweet, and an absolute rice thief. You can order the spicy pork stir-fry instead of mackerel too, so pick whichever suits your taste, right??

So there she was, diligently picking every bit of the mackerel clean... Jin, seemingly happy to have grilled fish after a long while, and seeing her enjoy it made me happy too. Geumdeungeo also does takeout, so you could bring it home and share with family. They've won a bunch of brand and management awards too! Guess that confirms it's a genuinely famous spot, right?

Free drinks and the free iced cup on the way out

On the way out after the meal, there were dessert drinks to enjoy too — a coffee machine and apricot juice. I tried the apricot juice and it was so sweet... haha. And they even provide free iced cups, so you can go with iced or hot coffee as you like~ This was the first restaurant I've seen that provides iced cups for free.

A walk around Suseong Lake after dinner

After a meal this enjoyable and delicious, stopping by Suseong Lake for a digestive walk while catching the pretty fountain show makes for a perfect date too!! The weather's nice and breezy these days too~

That's my introduction to Geumdeungeo, the mackerel spot near Suseong Lake. How about enjoying delicious grilled mackerel, spicy pork stir-fry, and cockle salad with your loved ones this weekend, then finishing off with a stroll around Suseong Lake?!!